Job overview

The post holder will provide a highly specialist speech and language therapy service for children and young people with severe and complex learning difficulties in Perseid special schools, in accordance with the service level agreement for Sutton Health and Care Alliance.

They will contribute to the development of the special schools speech and language therapy service for children. They will plan and provide highly specialist speech and language therapy assessment, advice and treatment to a defined caseload of children with severe and complex needs.  They will work in partnership with the children, their families and with other professions and agencies, including school staff and the wider health team, to reduce the impact of these difficulties on children’s social and emotional development, their learning and their ability to participate in daily life.

They will work autonomously and without direct supervision, and be accountable for their own actions.

Main duties of the job

·         To be responsible for a clinical caseload of children and young people attending Perseid Special Schools as identified by the service specification, managing the defined caseload independently and prioritising own workload to ensure effective service provision

·         To manage the needs of children presenting with eating and drinking difficulties, including assessment, diagnosis and treatment as appropriate

·         To provide support and training to families and school staff to enable eating and drinking programmes to be implemented as part of children’s therapy packages.

·         To assess, diagnose, treat and manage a defined caseload of children with complex communication needs within the school including the use of AAC devices where identified

·         To provide training to enable SLT communication programmes to be implemented as part of the child’s therapy package

·         To be involved in planning the development of the SLT service in liaison with the school management team and Perseid Team Leader / Service Manager for Children’s Specialist Nursing and Therapies.

·         To act as a resource to the Sutton Health and Care Alliance SLT service and other agencies.

Working for our organisation

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·         To demonstrate a well developed knowledge of paediatric therapy for both eating and drinking and communication skills, underpinned by current evidence based practice.

·         To manage a specialist and highly complex clinical caseload as an autonomous practitioner.

·         To use and demonstrate highly specialist knowledge to inform sound clinical judgements / decision making for complex case management and advise others on the same, often in the absence of robust evidence base.

·         To make appropriate differential diagnoses and highly specialist clinical decisions based on assessment findings.

·         To contribute to and when appropriate coordinate applications for AAC devices including funding requests.

·         To work in partnership with the education SLTs to research and implement the use of AAC devices within school.

·         To develop clear care plans and pathways based on best practice and to update these according to departmental standards.